Productivity

How We Helped the Oil & Gas Industry Save Millions

When it comes to innovation, some companies look for problems to fix and then fix them. That doesn’t mean they create the problems. Rather, they look for a problem or a pain point that people might have and then figure out a way to solve it. Then they market that solution and hope the people

The Secret to Managing Discipline in a Large Business Setting

Managing discipline in a large company starts with the hiring process. I’ve always believed in hiring slow and firing fast. But I also had a rule that nobody could be fired without my permission. What that meant was any issue that looked like it could end in termination would elevate to me so a manager

How to Maintain the Right Inventory Levels

A serious problem facing many manufacturers is tying up cash reserves by keeping too much inventory or too many raw materials on hand. Finished products don’t move as quickly as you thought, or you made more than you needed “just in case,” or you bought a lot of raw materials because you got a bigger

How Can You Reduce Your Transaction Costs?

In the non-manufacturing world, a transaction is an easy process. When you buy a shirt, you give money to the store, and they give you a shirt. That’s a transaction. In the manufacturing world, a transaction is a more involved process. A customer sends a purchase order that orders 1,000 shirts (normally, economists like to

Why You Should Measure Your Scrap Output?

In the past I’ve talked about the importance of measuring every part of a manufacturing company, from machine output to associate productivity. I’ve even said the back office people should be quantifiably measured too, including departments like HR and Purchasing, and even the executives. That also means measuring your scrap output. While it may seem

Nepotism Destroys Company Culture & Productivity

If there’s one thing I don’t like about companies is nepotism. If you’re in a family business, nepotism is a productivity killer. And it was certainly the cause of a lot of my headaches when I first started working at Robroy. In those early days, we were running three 8-hour shifts in the factory, and

A Successful Company Needs Intrapreneurs

A friend once told me he thought the people who were troublemakers were the ones who made the best entrepreneurs. They were the ones who got in trouble because when they saw problems, they found ways around them, or they challenged the authority figures, rather than toeing the line and accepting the status quo. These

I Don’t Believe in Remote Work for Employees

This one is going to make me unpopular, especially with today’s modern marvels of broadband technology, video conferencing, and our ability to multi-task and work anywhere in the world. I don’t believe in remote work for employees. (Not a big shocker, I’m sure, since you already read the headline.) But I believe that if you’re

How We Turned a 10-Day Inventory Process Into a One-Day Process

It’s an inventory cage match! Justin Case versus Justin Time Can you imagine running a factory or business where it takes you 10 days just to do a basic count on your inventory? One of the problems is you might count something on Day 1 only to have to recount it because it’s been used

How I Doubled Output By Cutting Head Count by Nearly Half

When I first started with Robroy, we needed an awful lot of cleanup, not only because the facility was dirty, but because there was a lot of nepotism in the organization that resulted in an awful lot of unproductive people working for us. Nepotism is never a good idea in an organization, and we had